Why search marketing matters in 2018

First let me ask you: how many unread emails are in the “promotions,” “updates,” and “other” tabs of your inbox? When I got to work on Monday morning, there were 248. How many of those did I read, you ask? Three at best, and only because they were already my favorite news roundups. The others? Didn’t stand a chance. “Marked as read,” “deleted,” and otherwise wholeheartedly, happily ignored.

Long story short, consumers these days are drowning in emails. We have promotions, “we’ve missed you!”s, “rate our product!”s, and 100 other types of unread newsletters pouring from our inboxes and never getting close to our attention.

For a long time, it was businesses seeking out consumers

And while that obviously is still at play, the tides are shifting. It’s just too much content to keep tabs on. More and more, consumers are ignoring the bombardment and seeking out businesses on their own terms — when and where they want to look.

For a long time, SEO was a small group of nerds (*experts) sitting in a corner doing their thing, trying to convince everyone that search mattered and that there were ways to improve rankings.

For a long time, people kind of let them do their thing while not understanding what SEO actually was or fully grasping their value.

But now, the amount of content is suffocating. I don’t want to read 248 “other” emails to find the information I need. I want it know.

Where do I go? The place where 93% of online journeys begin: I search.

Now, businesses need to be found by searching consumers

As often happens when tech goes mainstream, all of a sudden businesses care a lot more about that group of nerds in the corner.

The question now turns to, “how can I make sure my business is found when and where my customers are looking?”

In a world of customer experience, I don’t want to bother consumers — I want them to happen “serendipitously” upon my product or service. I want to be there when they’re ready.

These days, customer journeys start not when a consumer walks into a store, or lands on my web page. Customer journeys start the second a consumer opens a search engine.

Desktop to mobile to voice

And to top it all off, the stakes keep getting higher. When I search on desktop, I probably look at the first ten results. On mobile, maybe I consider five. On voice? One gold spot at the top.